Cobblestone Streets
by VSErinM
Summary: Approximately 10 years in the future, people have gone their separate ways and ties have been broken. Chance encounters and dire circumstances bring together what even tragedy and adversity could not.


"No more fighting." She breathed the words, none too unfamiliar to the ears that were hearing them. Of course they didn't believe her; they never did.  
  
It was ten years ago, when the world seemed careless and life seemed everlasting. Even though they had danced a moonlit tango with the scent of death wafting over the breeze, even though she had died, and actually gone away, they all thought that it was impossible. The more that happened to them, the more they believed that they were invincible. Call it naiveté, or perhaps call it foolishness. Either way, they didn't believe her.  
  
For several months they had believed that maybe she had run away again, and was going to return. Even after a year of hoping, searching, and returning fruitless they still never gave up. Why would she want to leave them? It was thousands of sunsets and sunrises ago. Even now, they expect her to walk through the door someday.  
  
When her little sister took up the battle, fighting the demons with the strength and force of the warrior, they looked on in awe and reservation. She couldn't have taught her sister how to fight like that; she never would have allowed it. Not the girl she died protecting, and definitely not the girl she shielded from the truth. She wouldn't wish her life on anyone, let alone her little sister. Dawn insisted that Buffy had shown her the ways of the slayer, how to fight and kill and stay alive. She wouldn't have left without ensuring Dawn's safety by teaching her how to survive.  
  
The demons didn't stop, even though they slowed down a little. If Buffy left to escape the night, she didn't succeed. They all knew that wherever she was, the demons would follow. They all wanted her; they craved the essence of the Slayer that lived inside of her body. Sometimes they wondered after she came back from Heaven if she was even Buffy anymore, and not just some manifestation of the Slayer. The first girl to fight the evil, the primeval power that protected and empowered Buffy. Maybe that's why the powers were never passed on to another; because there could be no other slayer. Buffy was the Slayer.  
  
Thousands of sunsets ago, some of that might have mattered. Time hadn't bided well for the gang, and the numbers naturally depleted. Giles, in all of his glory, passed on in a battle to the death, always being the father, protecting his young. He saved Willow, Xander and Anya, but for all of his power, and cunning and sheer will, he couldn't save Dawn. She wouldn't go down running, she said. She had to fight. Just like her sister. Only Dawn didn't know how to keep going like Buffy did. A losing battle was not something she was accustomed to, and for all of the skill that Buffy had given to her sister, she could never bestow her the gift of invulnerability or rapid healing. A major blow was all it took to be fatal, and Buffy's resilience never proved apparent in her sister. Two funerals and a million tears later, the numbers dwindled to three, but the feeling of invincibility had increased a hundred-fold.  
  
Time was on their side, and Buffy could come back. How the world had changed, though, over those thousands of sunsets and sunrises. They had washed out the land, and changed its appearance to something nearly unrecognizable. They never stopped to take a look at how much life had changed since she disappeared.  
  
**Paris, France**  
  
A walk along the cool, cobblestone street, passing the vendors whose carts were filled with fresh baguette and wheels of Brie, Camembert and St. Paulin had become the customary morning walk. Buy a coffee at the little café on the corner, the one where the awning gave way to relieving shade and coloured the stone building's front with stripes of blue and white. Pass the vendors, and the artists, the mimes and the wood-trimmed windows, follow the winding streets towards the river. Find the fruit vendor poised by the riverside, always willing to offer the freshest of his fruits, readied with a knife to cut her an orange for her breakfast. Perhaps a mango today, it really didn't matter. Sit on the bench, watch the small boats, and bicyclists and rollerbladers fly by, over the tiny bridge and onto the paved streets. The other side was beautiful, too, but it was reserved for shopping on Saturdays, and rare retreats into real life. Even after ten years, she still didn't know what the river looked like at night. Fears of a haunting past have always prevented her from doing it.  
  
Tying her blonde hair back into a low ponytail, and placing her glasses on her head, she floats barefoot through the emerald grass lining the riverbank. She approaches another small bench, one that she was sitting on for her last painting. Frederique had wanted to capture the "essence" spring, bright flowers and shining water flowing behind her. She made the scene look alive, he had claimed. She could live with that. There was a time in her life when she was far too insecure to trust a comment that praised her, and to accept the notion that life could exist outside of the shadows; that she belonged to the light, and glowed under the sun's warm rays.  
  
Very rarely did her thoughts stray from the quiet cobblestone streets, or the breezy, lush riverside. And only on the special occasion visits would she cross to the other side. For too long, she had avoided contact. Going over there proved to be too risky, and too cosmopolitan. There was always the risk of running into someone unexpected, someone avoided on the other side. With heavy thoughts, and deep-rooted fears of being discovered and disrupted after ten years, she interrupted her routine and bought another latte before walking across the bridge onto the other side, for a brief visit to a shop-owner. Spending so little time there, she thought, would ensure that she wouldn't have any surprises, or run into unexpected people. 


End file.
